‘Rings of Power’ Season 2: Getting Better, Still Flawed

Even though Amazon considers 2022’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power debut a success—the company touts more than 100 million viewers worldwide and record-breaking Prime Video signups from the show’s launch—many Tolkien fans found the premiere season a mixed bag, if not a total disappointment.

I share that feeling. Season 1 was beautiful to look at and generally strong on big-budget world-building but comparatively weak on character development and largely void of the merriment that makes Tolkien’s Middle-earth stories so beloved. Still, I understood this was just the first season in a planned five-season series arc. Surely it’d get better?

Having seen all eight episodes of Rings of Power season 2, I’m happy to report it has gotten marginally better—for a few specific reasons I’ll highlight below—even as some of the previous season’s problems still plague it.

Overstuffed and Overwrought

Let’s get the problems out of the way first. There are too many characters, and the episodes jump back and forth between plotlines in a way that often feels frenetic. The admittedly complex physical and cultural geography of Middle-earth is already hard to place, and Rings of Power’s hopscotching narrative doesn’t make it easier.

Season 2 is also overstuffed with action spectacles. Fight scenes abound, with all manner of sword, shield, arrow, ax, and acrobatic Elven warfare. Perilous monsters pervade (giant mud worms, huge sea beasts, trolls, Shelob-style spiders, creepy armies of the dead), such that their menace feels muted. When the CGI phantasmagoria is constantly dialed up to 10, none of it packs a significant punch, and all of it kind of blends together.

When the CGI phantasmagoria is constantly dialed up to 10, none of it packs a significant punch, and all of it kind of blends together.

The callbacks to Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings movies feel overdone in Rings of Power (which, as a reminder, is set in Middle-earth’s Second Age, before the Third Age depicted in Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit). While nods to and stylistic continuity with Jackson’s exceptional trilogy are understandable, they feel excessive. Cameos by giant eagles, spiders, Ents, and even a Balrog all pay homage to memorable moments in Jackson’s films (and largely copy his cinematic depiction of them) but rarely in ways that improve or expand on his rendering. The delights of these fan-service cameos would be greater if they were subtler and in rarer supply.

The series feels bogged down by overwrought dialogue. Sometimes the dialogue is great; often it’s cringey. The script tends to put exposition into characters’ mouths unnecessarily: “They’re damming the river!” one character yells during a climactic battle scene (even though the imagery alone clearly communicates this point). The scripts don’t always heed cinema’s tried-and-true wisdom: show, don’t tell.

Better Thematic and Character Development

Despite these flaws, Rings of Power improves in its second season by delving deeper into big themes and giving a few characters more breathing room to become somewhat compelling. Here are two examples of what I thought season 2 did well.

Power’s Seduction, Deception’s Disguise

Even though Galadriel (Morfydd Clark) is arguably still the show’s central protagonist, season 2 belongs to its chief villain, Sauron (Charlie Vickers). After season 1’s twisty revelation of Halbrand as Sauron, season 2 focuses on Sauron’s origins, ambitions, and attempts to consolidate power through forging magical rings. The shape-shifting Dark Lord masquerades in “fair form” for much of season 2 as Annatar, “Lord of Gifts,” who poses as an emissary of the Valar to gain trust among the Elves of Eregion, chiefly lead craftsman Celebrimbor (Charles Edwards). Sauron (as Annatar) wants to collaborate with Celebrimbor to create “rings of power,” and much of the best drama this season involves this relationship and its implications for Middle-earth.

Vickers sinks his teeth into the role of Sauron/Annatar, whose parallels with Satan are underscored constantly—from his cunning skills of deception to his frequent “I have many names” refrain. His dynamic with Celebrimbor captures well how the Devil deceives through promises of glory, power, and a “greater good”—and how easily we fall into that deception.

Elsewhere in the season’s eight episodes, we start to see a familiar arc recur for those who wear the rings: what they took as a tool they could master becomes a master that enslaves them. As in The Lord of the Rings, the rings in Rings of Power stand in for the corruptions of power, the temptations of pragmatism, and the perils of bypassing the “right way” in favor of “the fast way.” The magical rings give its wearers godlike powers, sure, but—like Eden’s forbidden fruit—they also bring death.

Refreshingly, the contrast of good and evil, light and dark is clearer in season 2 than in season 1, where we got murky, theologically questionable lines like “Sometimes to find the light, we must first touch the darkness.” By contrast, season 2’s central quote comes from Celebrimbor, who seeks to remind the Elves as they consider how to defeat Sauron,

It is not strength that overcomes darkness, but light. Armies may rise, hearts may fail, yet still light endures. And it is mightier than strength. For in its presence, all darkness must flee.

Light—transcendent virtue, goodness, truth, beauty—is clearly celebrated in season 2 as the only thing with enough potency to defeat the armies of darkness.

Light’s Beauty, Virtue’s Drama

Even as Sauron is the “star” of season 2, and those he seduces grow in number, other characters model virtue and show that goodness and light can also be compelling to watch.

I liked the development of Elendil (Lloyd Owen) as a man of humble valor and unbreakable integrity. “I would rather die with a heart that is whole than live with one broken by cowardice,” says Elendil, an ancestral archetype for Aragorn and a key Second-Age figure in Tolkien’s Middle-earth saga. No doubt Elendil will loom larger in future seasons of Rings of Power, and I hope the show continues to depict him as a strong, unassailable man of honor.

The magical rings give its wearers godlike powers, sure, but—like Eden’s forbidden fruit—they also bring death.

Among the noble Elves, Elrond (Robert Aramayo), Gil-galad (Benjamin Walker), and Arondir (Ismael Cruz Córdova) are compellingly virtuous and strong, even as the depiction of Galadriel continues to feel rather far afield from Tolkien’s version.

The show’s central Dwarf protagonists—Prince Durin (Owain Arthur) and Princess Disa (Sophia Nomvete)—are perhaps the most delightful and dimensional in a series that is often too serious and too flat. Not only does this couple showcase a loving marriage, but Durin’s relationship with his father (Peter Mullan) provides some of the season’s most moving scenes. Even though Rings of Power generally lacks the emotional gut-punch moments frequent in Jackson’s trilogy, some of the scenes featuring the Durins did have my eyes welling up with tears.

Another intriguing, though still rather underdeveloped, character in the show is “The Stranger” (Daniel Weyman). This desert-wandering, compassionate, miracle-working wizard—his true identity is revealed by the end of season 2—becomes a companion and protector of the “Harfoots.” He also provides some of the jolliest moments in the season when he stumbles across none other than Tom Bombadil (Rory Kinnear).

Less Bombast, More Bombadil

Tolkien fans will delight in Bombadil’s appearance, especially after he was noticeably absent from Jackson’s trilogy. Though often viewed as “inessential to the plot” (and thus easily cut from cinematic depictions), Bombadil is an enigmatic figure whose very superfluity might make him Tolkien’s most spiritually significant character.

Where most other characters in the drama constantly spend their time fighting, scheming, running, chasing, or surviving, merry Tom Bombadil sings, sits for tea by the hearth, and gathers lilies. His little house is a haven in a perilous world. He talks a lot about the “secret fire” (for Tolkien, a sort of image of the Holy Spirit) and seems filled with it himself. Referring to himself as “Eldest,” having been present at “the first raindrop and the first acorn,” his wisdom seems rooted in a prelapsarian, agrarian contentedness, mixed with a steadfast assurance of hope in Paradise regained: “A far green country under a swift sunrise.”

He’s a nonanxious presence in an otherwise tense series. I’m glad the series made space for him (even if they do use him more to advance The Stranger’s character arc). And I’m glad we even get to hear Bombadil sing a lovely adaptation of one of his songs from The Fellowship of the Ring (check out the song on the soundtrack, recorded by Rufus Wainwright and composer Bear McCreary).

Bombadil’s inclusion fulfills part of what I hoped for when I wrote about the first episodes of Rings of Power season 1:

For me, the interludes of goodness, truth, and beauty—whether in landscapes and worlds, loving relationships, or poetry and song—are the heart of Middle-earth’s enduring appeal. These are the moments that offer those “piercing glimpses of joy” Tolkien described, and I hope The Rings of Power values them as much as he did.

Future seasons of Rings of Power will no doubt take the story into darker territory and bigger battles, likely culminating in The War of the Last Alliance. My hope, however, is that amid the bombs and bombast, showrunners Patrick McKay and J. D. Payne don’t bypass Bombadilian glimpses of joy. For these interludes remind us what life shaped by “secret fire” looks like, why the good is good, and why it makes darkness look boring by comparison.

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